[jandrese]

Is that headline damning with faint praise? Mere "thousands" doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network. For comparison Google+ had something on the order of 300 million users and failed to get traction.

[organsnyder]

Google+ only had that many users because many other Google properties (YouTube being the biggest) were lumped in together. I bet the majority of Google+ "users" weren't even aware that the platform existed.

[varjag]

Right, it would grab you by YT and wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Effectively it was also world's largest deanonymization effort. Must have been some hefty internal incentives program at Google, they tried as if their bonus depended on it.

[dbuder]

I remember fighting it and failing, I was like what! I said no a dozen different ways and here is my full name.

[marcoseliziario]

Yeah. If you had a google account was more or less impossible not to be on Google+. The thing is that engagement was pathetically low. We used to joke that the best password manager would be to post all your secrets in a google+ posting, because nobody would ever see your post.

[SlowRobotAhead]

But that right there is why as a fairly strict free market type, I see the need for government intervention in some tech antitrust situations.

If Google+ failed with google immediately signing anyone with a gmail account up for it and pushing it fairly hard with all their channels - how extremely unlikely is it for someone to organically take Facebook’s market share away?

Oh no problem, you’ll only need someone with more resources than Google!

[zepto]

Google plus didn’t do anything significantly better than Facebook

[vcavallo]

everyone I knew had a Google+ account and none of them knew it.

[gaius_baltar]

Maybe not mainly YT: Google forced people to create one account there even for rating Android apps, so I suppose a lot of random Android users were counted too.

[capableweb]

How many users do you think HN has? No matter how many, I think I would call HN mostly a success (currently/temporary?). Seems that to have a good social network, it's less about quantity of content and more about quality. Most of Twitter is shit, but it contains some average content too, and a small amount of gold nuggets. HN feels to have much better signal/noise ratio and judging by myself and others who hang around here, it's way better here than what other "critical mass" social networks have.

[Uehreka]

I don’t think it makes sense to compare HN to other social networks. It wasn’t started as a business that would need to turn a profit, it was started as a side project by a rich guy (Paul Graham) who wanted to see what smart people thought about things.

If HN fails to ever hit 1M users, PG (or Sam Altman) isn’t going to shut it down or cut off its funding, and neither he nor Y Combinator are expecting or relying on it to generate revenue. It continues to exist after over a decade because the Y Combinator folks find the content and discussion interesting.

And hey, that’s all well and good. I’m glad that HN sticks around when a more profit-driven site would’ve failed years ago. But it’s important to note that what works for HN likely wouldn’t work for anyone else.

[capableweb]

I agree that HN is not like most social networks, but it also bears resemblance with many other social networks. Largely the ones that are not founded for the reason of profits.

> But it’s important to note that what works for HN likely wouldn’t work for anyone else.

It's also important to note that what does work for HN, might work for others too. We won't know unless we try. Strict moderation is something that helped HN, helped make Flashback (Swedish Forum) tolerable and something many of the greatest subreddits applied with great success. Just an example.

[chimi]

HN is a marketing channel for startups who might want to pitch ycombinator, then market the startups they pick, then find employees for those startups, then repeat.

The value isn't in selling ads.

I see this whole line of reasoning that thousands of people isn't enough to be newsworthy a symptom of valleythink where all that is valued is growth.

There are other factors that indicate success and the community for the most part has lost sight of those for the tunnel vision of "must get funding!"

[jmmcd]

Profit is not quite the point. The point is that in order for HN to be a useful site, so that person n+1 decides to join, all they need is that the first n people have something interesting to say. For a Facebook competitor to be useful to person n+1, the first n people have to include a lot of their existing friends and family. Network effects.

[ForHackernews]

> The platform says it will never sell user data and relies on "the generosity of individual donors" rather than ads.

Sounds like this isn't envisioned as a profit-making business, either. I'd happily donate some money to have a place my friends and family can easily hang out online that isn't trying to sell us to anything.

[metalliqaz]

Is HS a social network? I think of it more like a forum. On HN I don't really care exactly who I interact with. It's just as good to me without my family and friends being users (better, in fact :). Real social networks aren't like that.

[capableweb]

"Real social networks"? There is nothing in "social network" that requires the relationship to be equal in real-life or that you even know the identity of the person you're writing with. Most would consider Twitter social media, and most people I know constantly interact and discuss with people they don't really care who they are and that's not what's important anyways.

I would say in general, places where you interact with other people ends up building some sort of social network of it's insides.

[mongol]

Yes I think it is a social network. They come in many shapes and forms. I think a forum is a social network too.

[metalliqaz]

HN doesn't even have direct messages, though.

[lasagnaphil]

I don’t even use the direct message feature at all in Reddit, but I still feel like interacting with people when I write comments though.

[rafiki6]

I think the key difference is HN doesn't need to make money

[capableweb]

Sure, we all choose our incentives. Facebook chose to follow money.

[rbritton]

Anecdotally, Google+ failed for me because I got stuck in an authentication loop for a business page. It wanted to verify the business, but the link to do so always errored out, which made it impossible to ever change the page content beyond what I initially put in. I stopped using both sides of it at that point, and it wouldn’t surprise me if others ran into similar rough edges. In true Google style, there was absolutely no route to support either.

[workthrowaway]

google+ did not fail for me. and many others i know. i enjoyed being part of communities around specific topics.

spamming was the only problem i saw. and i just couldn't comprehend that the same company that defeated spams in email couldn't do the same on their social network.

someone made a comment earlier about twitter killed vine and now tiktok is being a better vine. maybe someday we will see a social network where the emphasis is on communities and not the self. that's what google+ did better than anything that was out there.

[Tenoke]

>maybe someday we will see a social network where the emphasis is on communities and not the self. that's what google+ did better than anything that was out there.

That seems to be filled by irc channels (less now), subreddits and more recently discords.

[znpy]

it failed for me because the UI was slow as molasses and the circles functionality, while cool, was not clear in the sense that it was not clear who could see what when "posting to circles"

[danielfoster]

Ran into a similar issue.

[nanomonkey]

From my experience on Scuttlebutt and other decentralized/alternative social medias, thousands will try something out just to kick the tires; it's staying, contributing and utilizing the tool for things it wasn't intended for that really matters.

[freehunter]

And convincing people to use a service named “scuttle butt”.

[tossAfterUsing]

annecdotally, my attention isn't usually held for long by people who are unwilling to engage with a service because of it's weird name...

https://scuttlebutt.nz/

[freehunter]

And that’s fine for you. But it’s not fine for the service.

Technically anyone can use the dating service Christian Mingle. But you might not find a lot of atheists or Jewish people on there, simply because of the name and the implication of the people who would use a service with that name.

[kick]

It's not a "service." They owe you nothing, and they don't need you to use it for them to keep using it. Especially given you aren't the target audience, all that really happens is you become a waste of bandwidth for anyone hosting a public peer.

[iamnothere]

Oh. Name bikeshedding again. Funny, people had the same criticisms about Twitter, yet it doesn't seem to be a problem now. And what the hell is a Google? (No, not a googol, which is the correct spelling.)

[nanomonkey]

That being said, the protocol is called scuttlebutt (which means gossip, or water cooler) and all the clients have more palatable names like Manyverse, Patchwork, Patchfoo, etc.

Fortunately, the protocol name is almost a filtering function that removes anyone so immature as to be put off by the name. The rest embrace the name, who doesn't like a good butt?

[freehunter]

I probably wouldn’t use it anyway because the way the name is defended online makes it likely that I wouldn’t enjoy the company of the service’s user base.

[detaro]

A word for chatting is somehow unsuitable as a name because you have to say the horrible 4-letter word "butt"?

[freehunter]

An archaic word that was only chosen because it includes the word “butt”?

[wutbrodo]

I wouldn't extrapolate the the level of immaturity it takes to make that connection to whoever named the service. The last time I giggled at hearing the word butt as part of a larger word or phrase was probably the second grade (cigarette butts, pork butt, etc)

[detaro]

Given the history of SSB, it seems quite unlikely that's the case. Originally developed by and for someone living on a boat, they used a nautical term to name the project.

[josinalvo]

Just watched the video about scuttlebutt.

To confirm: a copy of my messages and images is permanently stored in my friend´s and my friend´s of friend´s diaries (up until the point where they delete them, I presume)

[thephyber]

Even Facebook had the Games platform to create gravity and staying power... but only for a few years until FB turned off the spigot of free viral News Feed spam to friends of the game player.

[sylens]

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

[type0]

No, no, it's already over 9000!

[rgbrenner]

That's because Google tried to be the network for everyone. There are a lot of people.. several billion, and if that's your market, then 300m doesn't cut it. (They also forced it onto everyone.. there was little community there.)

On the other hand, being the social network for a smaller audience is very do-able. Even Facebook started locally at Zuckerbergs college, then expanded to other colleges, before eventually opening up. Being the social network for a single school only requires a few thousand people.. then you're the social network everyone (in that school) wants to be on to discuss events relevant to the school... and you've created your foothold.

Google was never interested in a creating a foothold in a small niche. They said "We're google.. basic marketing rules don't apply" and they learned they were wrong.

[Kye]

Somehow I doubt they learned the lesson it should have taught them.

[MBCook]

But G+ users didn’t choose it (by and large) it just happened TO them.

In this case at least the users had agency and actually signed up.

Still a small number in the grand scheme, but G+ was a bit of a different beast due to how Google launched it.

[dawg-]

>Mere "thousands" doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network.

It's kind of like running for president of the United States and bragging that you got "hundreds" of votes.

[Barrin92]

I don't think the purpose here is to be the proverbial president of the US but to simply have a community of people who are willing to chip some money in and who want healthier discourse.

If you're going to blow up to the size of facebook you're just going to suffer from the very same problems. More diversity and more competition and more alternatives is what this is supposed to be part of. I think the point here is to build an ecosystem of saner social networks, not the next Franken-network.

[beat]

But will it suffer from the problem of monetizing user data? That seems to be the big thing it's designed to avoid.

[dmos62]

After a brief recitation of facts it ends on a critical note, on par with the title:

> Social media consultant Zoe Cairns said she thought the network would have to grow its numbers quickly in order to prove itself to be a viable alternative to the giants.

> "It's going to need a lot of money ploughed into it," she said.

> "People are so used to social media being free. I think businesses might pay for it, but people are so used to having news at their fingertips for free."

[gnode]

> doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network.

I'm not sure it matters for this social network. It's positioning as a news-based platform doesn't require people you know personally to use the site in order for it to have value.

Perhaps conversely, too many people on a social network may be detrimental to these aims, as ever more narrow-minded echo chambers or factions can achieve critical mass.

[enitihas]

Mere thousands are nowhere enough, but even Facebook also should have a very small number of high revenue customers. As long as this new network can draw a good enough amount of those users, they will be fine and will also impact Facebook's bottom line.

[xchaotic]

The size of the network didn’t doom Google+. It was the product management

[mc3]

And Facebook had something like a college dorm, and did get traction.

[ddxxdd]

That faint praise will transform into real praise once millions of BBC readers feel compelled to join those thousands already in Wikipedia's version of facebook.

[gamblor956]

Just what I've always wanted. A social network where others can edit my posts, competing reversion bots, and all power concentrated in a few super-users with nothing else to do with their time.

What a compelling experience...

[p1esk]

I don’t feel compelled.

[a0zU]

Google+ users only had to make a gmail account to be signed up for Google+, the amount of people actually actively using Google+ was far lower than 300 million.